Team NZ are keeping up with the Joneses
The daughter of an iconic America’s Cup sailor is among Team New Zealand’s relaunch of their two-boat testing programme with their new youth and women’s teams.
Two members of both the women’s and youth squads have been training at Team NZ’s base in Auckland this week, sailing around Waitematā Harbour for the first time since the return of the Kiwi syndicate’s second AC40 Cup boat from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Gemma Jones, whose father Murray was part of six winning Cup teams from 1995 to 2017, and Liv Mackay have been aboard the AC40s and will be with the five-strong Kiwi crew racing in Barcelona in the Cup’s first standalone women’s event in its 173-year history.
Alongside them in Auckland this week were two sailors from the five-man Kiwi youth team, Oscar Gunn and Leo Takahashi, and it marked a milestone in this year’s Cup build-up as they left behind the racing simulator for the real deal on the water.
“It was nice to get some water over the face,’’ Jones said. “It’s a different sensation. There’s only so much the simulator can replicate.”
While other members of the youth and women’s teams were absent because of preparations for the Paris Olympics, the reintroduction of their two testing boats zipping around the Hauraki Gulf is significant.
Jones, Mackay, Gunn and Takahashi will mix and match between the AC40s in match-racing scenarios against the likes of Peter Burling and Blair Tuke from Team NZ’s top crew, allowing them to train in the Cup boats they will sail in competition in Barcelona.
The AC40s are half-scale compared with the AC75s that will be launched soon for the main America’s Cup event.
They were sailed in last year’s preliminary regattas in Vilanova i la Geltrú and Jeddah and have been used for testing because of their similar design as a foiling monohull.